Snobby Parties And Lovely Meetings
by pam halliwell
Summary: AU Literati oneshot. Rory POV. “It’s all in the left leg.” A smug smirk quickly appeared on his face. “It’s all in the left leg.”


**Snobby Parties ****And**** Lovely Meetings**

Disclaimer: sighs exasperatedly No I don't own GG or any of the characters or associated with any of the actors. I will say this over and over until the big scary Disclaimer gods get off us poor lowly people's asses.

Ok, so this is sort of a weird fic. You'll probably immediately think Rory and Jess are OOC, especially Rory, but please bear in mind that this is AU.

It is my first attempt at AU and yes I did choose to let myself get carried away with it. However, in essence, I think it's good old Rory and Jess.

Enjoy.

Please feel free to point out anything that you didn't agree with.

Oh oh and can we pretend, just for the few minutes it takes to read this story that Jess is a poet as well as a writer. Poets are too sexy for me to resist :P

GGGG

He was handsome, broody and handsome… when we first started dating I rolled my eyes at the ridiculous cliché I had thrown myself into. But he was intelligent. And that is my turn on. He was no genius… just intelligent, and as an only child who grew up in a small town and loved books and all knowledge, intelligent men were hard to come by.

When the fateful night occurred; the night we met, I had long resigned comfortably into my spinsterhood. I was twenty-five. Now I can't help but envision a few women and their reactions to these statements. They might be surprised and somewhat shocked as to how a woman of twenty-five had already resigned her fate to endless singledom. Well to those who insist on the existence of 'The One', I say "I had given up on 'The One For Me'". To the relationship-obsessed who think but wouldn't voice "a woman cannot live without a man", I say, well it's very unlady-like what I want to say but it's at par with "Screw you." To those feminist independent forty-somethings who say "You had the rest of your life ahead of you", I say "By the age of twenty-five I had gone on my good share of dates, thank you."

By that time, I found most men that approached me uninteresting. Don't get me wrong. I found them ATTRACTIVE, just not interesting. Everytime I spoke to them for more than ten minutes I started going off on tangents in my head. My fear of intimacy might have had something to do with it but that's another cup of coffee, as my mother would say.

The result was a string of one night-stands and subsequent bolts in the morning that would have made Cassanova proud for about a year and a half, at the end of which I was even more bored and well frankly physically tired.

We met at a party, a chit-chat stuffed party. It was one of those "no reason for it" parties. Translation: it had the most important reason behind it; contact enrichment. Anyone who was anyone in the publishing world was invited by Random House and anyone who wanted to get invited had to beg, grovel and downright bribe to get in. I had somehow managed to get invited in a rudimentary way, that should have been my first clue that I really didn't belong there. But I was stubborn. An old college friend had invited me after I told her I wanted to be a book editor.

He was obviously one of their authors, still unknown but in the gibberish language of publishing scouts he was "the next great talent, the next Joseph Conrad." Who would want another Neruda? One is more than enough. That is what makes certain authors great. The expression "Comparisons are odious" was invented by a well-known writer who was sick to death of having up-and-coming writers compared to him. It was probably Coleridge.

I was actually a journalist of all things back then. A film critic, to make matters even more incongruous. I was good at what I did. I was no Roger Ebert but I was witty and concise enough to be relatively well-known. But I always had a passion to be a book editor. A film reviewer who wanted to be in publishing was preposterous. Still is. They have nothing in common. Actually, it is my honest opinion that books and films are practically siblings and I love them both dearly for one very simple reason: They both escape! My mother shared that wonderful epiphany with me at a very young age.

I had been invited in the hopes of me schmoozing one of the major book editors into a job. I had gotten a couple of promises for interviews but after two hours of non-stop shameless flattering, in heels nonetheless, I was tired. So I distanced myself from the main cliques, and with the right combination of stance and location I managed to not seem like a social outcast but rather as if I was waiting for my handsome, millionaire boyfriend to come back with a glass of champagne. Over the years I had perfected these stances, using these moments to regroup, yet making sure not to stand too long or else someone might pick up on my charade, or worse, try to engage me in yet another fruitless conversation.

So as I was standing next to a hibiscus plant that covered me almost entirely and gave a quick eye-swipe of the room, I noticed him at the bar. He was handsome. (In retrospect, nobody ever criticized my taste in men.) He was handsome in a not so conspicuous way. He was perfectly imperfect.

My eyes skimmed over him quickly though. However, in the two remaining seconds that it took me to skim the rest of the crowd and get ready to walk off, I saw him walking in my direction out of the corner of my eye. For a split second I wondered if he had noticed that my gaze had stopped on him more than it should have.

But it couldn't be. At these parties, nobody pays attention to detail. It's the mindless routine of 'kiss, kiss, mwa, mwa' that we all care about. But for a fleeting moment I couldn't help but hope he was coming to talk to me. And that's where what I called 'Auto-Pilot Spinster' kicked in. It was a subconscious tirade that went something like this: "Of course he's not coming over here for you, don't be an idiot. This isn't a chick flick, where men get all in a dizzy over a look. You didn't even share a look! Anyways, if he's that good-looking, chances are he's a player." Do you see the kind of automatic mental block I was trying to put up with? Freud would have a field day with me.

Looking back on everything right now, I had, at the time, forgotten that as a girl I had always dreamed that HE would come to ME.

"Awful conversation. Overpriced champagne. Barely any food so the wannabee models that are all these men's dates won't be tempted to eat. Headache-inducing lights Cliché music yet an unbelievably beautiful balcony overlooking the city. All in all, I'd say a beacon of success for posh pointless parties everywhere." He faced the crowd while saying this speaking to me from the corner of his mouth.

I though at least he had begun the conversation in an original way. He got brownie points for inspiring wit on my part, "It should get the gold at the Olynpics."

"No I hear the Oscar Vanity Fair party is up for that this year."

"So it's rigged?"

"Always… but you didn't hear it from me." And with that he gave a slight smirk and a sideways glance towards me. He looked like a little boy thinking of a ploy how to get someone off the swing he wanted to be on. I couldn't help but laugh.

"And who might you be?"

He turned fully towards me, "Now how do I know that you won't use that information to report me to the Posh Pointless Parties Police?"

"You just made an alliteration… which I am not convinced wasn't planned, at one of these parties. You really aren't one of them are you?"

"I'm a poet with poet's block. This is the unfortunate backlash."

"A poet? Well you're in trouble. I happen to know someone with quick access to the guest list. And they told me that there were only six poets invited. Four are married, one is blonde," (I had had hands on experience –literally- with this last one earlier) "and the other is having a case of party withdrawal syndrome apparently. I can easily check said guest list to find out your name."

He made a mock worried look. So far, he looked so much like a boy it was uncanny. Yet there was something about his manner that showed he was old beyond his years.

"Busted. Who is this person with impeccable guest list abilities?"

"A posh party police officer never reveals their sources of information."

"I'm in big trouble, aren't I?"

"Since this is your first time, I'll let you off with a warning. Next time though buddy, it'll be a fine."

"Duly noted. Thank you officer."

"Just doing my duty, Sir. It wouldn't be fair to the other attendees."

At that he let out a laugh. He seemed pleasantly surprised at finding me so willing to go along with his mockery.

"Boy, am I glad I found someone interesting. Five minutes ago, I was seriously contemplating breaking a bottle over my head."

"That bad?"

"I am what they call an "unknown" author. I've been pushed around to practically every group of stuffy suits by my agent and almost set up with three socialites by my editor who looks at me more as a renegade son who she can play around with rather than her author."

"Well you can't really blame her. If the schmoozing doesn't work…"

"Sleep your way up."

"Ain't it the same in every industry?"

"You know I heard of a time when the writing spoke for itself. I wouldn't know. I'm too new."

"Urban myth."

"I think so too."

It was the first pair of knowing smirks we shared. The first of many. In those two seconds we shared, I would always get the image of my veins turning into rock and then immediately to goo. It took me a while to realize that it was just my original way of describing the equivalent of "My heart warmed just a bit". I was always one to create my own metaphors I guess.

A moment of silence passed between us, not uncomfortable though.

He cleared his throat and looked somewhat shy but offered his hand to shake, "Jess Mariano."

I looked at his hand. I knew that this was inevitably going to lead to him asking me for a date but for once in my life I didn't feel scared at the prospect.

"Lorelai Gilmore but everyone calls me Rory."

"Huh."

"My mother was high on Demerol and pissed off at patriarchal traditions of men naming their sons after them."

He smirked and I think he immediately assumed who he had to thank for my willingness to go along with his funny charade earlier.

"How did you know I would be receptive to your anti-posh party diatribe?" I asked.

He turned again and went back to facing the ground. This time, however, he did not speak out of the corner of his mouth. I waited patiently, still turned towards him.

"You shifted at one point. I could tell you were faking. There is nobody getting you a drink. I'm more sure of it now because he would have shown up. Although a few men have given you a good look-over even while I was right here talking to you." He said this last bit softly almost as if it were a secret.

At that I did something that I hadn't done in years. I blushed. I wasn't too thick to not understand what he was implying. But never had I heard that kind of compliment uttered so … well, the only word that comes to mind is 'gentlemanly'.

"How did you figure it out?" I asked. I was very curious about this man who seemed to know essential party-faking tricks.

"It's all in the left leg." A smug smirk quickly appeared on his face. "It's all in the left leg."

GGGG

Well there you go. Hope you liked it. Please press the pretty purple button :)


End file.
